Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

SVG Sit-Down: At IBC 2022, Vizrt Team Reflects on the Company's Transformation Since 2019

19/09/2022

SVG Sit-Down: At IBC 2022, Vizrt Team Reflects on the Company's Transformation Since 2019 The exhibit touted cloud developments, Engine 5, and NDI version 5.5 By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Monday, September 19, 2022 - 11:26 am

Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

Vizrt was one of the companies that showed up at IBC transformed since IBC 2019. The acquisition of NDI, which was fresh in 2019, is now fully integrated and baked into the Vizrt environment; the cloud and virtualized tools continue to gain interest from customers; and the company even announced acquisition of Flowics at the show. During the show, SVG caught up with four members of the Vizrt team: TJ Akhtar, VP, product management, Vizrt; Suso Carrillo, NDI marketing lead, Vizrt Group; Amisa Saari-Stout, communications specialist, Vizrt; and Ulrich Voigt, VP, product management, Vizrt Cloud Solutions, Vizrt. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.

(l-to-r) Vizrt's Suso Carillo; Ulrich Voight, Amasi Saari-Stout, and TJ Akhtar at IBC last week.

What are the big storylines for Vizrt at IBC 2022?

Akhtar: From a group perspective, there are a lot of new things. At NAB, we talked a lot about the cloud piece and new developments on the Viz Engine side as well as NDI. At our Vizrt days, we had a preview of two big things: the cloud piece and the release of Viz Engine 5. Fast forward a few more months, and we now have NDI version 5.5 and then the acquisition of Flowics in the past few days. So it has been a very busy period for us.

Can you give us an update on the Vizrt engine?

Akhtar: A couple of the big pieces of Engine 5. We rewrote the integration with Unreal Engine 5, which was released earlier this year. That comes with a lot of new features like Lumen for the lighting piece, and you can build your own virtual world and mass scale with Nanite [the virtualized geometry system in version 5]. We want to utilize all those features and rebuild our integration from the ground up so the features can be used natively, including the retracing. We can control from Viz Engine and our control application pretty much every single element as part of an Unreal Scene.

On top of that, we also added asset management of Unreal Engine Scenes, which can be multiple gigs. We've added support for Unreal within our Graphics Hub, which is a massive piece and gives redundancy when collaborating and security of your traffic files.

We also have adaptive graphics for adaptive storytelling where content is delivered on multiple platforms and over multiple target points. And we've actually passed the inflection point where consumption is on digital vs. linear broadcast, so we want to make it easier for broadcasters to create graphics that can be used and played out via multiple sources and whether it is 16:9 or 9:16 for TikTok or square for Instagram and Facebook. Adaptive graphics enables all of that, and our broadcast partners can design a graphic once and use it multiple times without having to duplicate the design.

Let's talk NDI 5.5. What's new, and what does it mean to the marketplace?

Carrillo: The key point with NDI 5.5 is that the focus is on NDI Tools, which is a suite of free tools that have features like multi-audio management, an NDI switcher, and some other capabilities.

NDI now has a lot of flexibility, and that's why we decided to improve the features so that everybody can have a multichannel-audio workflow.

Akhtar: Just to add to that: one of the benefits of NDI 5.5 as part of Viz Engine is the insertion of metadata within the NDI stream. That enables the graphics piece to do multi-camera remote production purely on NDI. That is enabled by new features that will be coming in a later release of NDI. When it comes to live production, the improvements move us towards live production in the cloud.

Let's talk about the cloud. Vizrt has been doing virtualized hardware for a long time. How does that help with customers moving production to the cloud?

Voigt: It's an easy step for us to go into the cloud and with some optimizations. The first step is that all our products are now running in the cloud so you can do Engine in the cloud, you can do switching, you can do replay, you can do sport analysis and even virtual ad overlays. And NDI is the fabric to make it possible and combine with on-premises equipment. For sports analysis, we can now get live camera feeds from the stadium and then do all the analysis and illustration creation in the cloud live and then get the signal back into the production.

The trick is, how do you make that accessible to the general user without the need for cloud engineers who are focused on security and the virtual environment? That is one reason we developed a cloud deployment platform that can set up the infrastructure and Vizrt tools virtually within 15 minutes after a template is selected for a type of production. All the user needs to do is connect to it, and they can do their work. We can still do remote production with hardware set up in two locations, but, with the cloud, you can build the whole production gallery in a matter of minutes by just selecting a template. Then the team has full control and can tweak it.

But key is that the cloud is just another infrastructure; it's not another product. And that makes it seamless: the user can have half of it in the cloud and half of it in the OB van. They can connect together and have the same workflow and create graphics and use them everywhere. Or they can create a show rundown in Mozart to automate the show in the cloud or in hardware.

The remote accessibility of NDI gives you a lot of new workflow possibilities. A remote commentator can use free NDI tools and NDI bridge to connect to the cloud, and everything is based on current workflows, so they don't need a cloud-enginee
LINK: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/09/19/svg-sit-down-at-ibc-2022-vizrt-...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

01/06/2026

Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026

January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026 Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...

14/05/2026

Sweetwater and Airstream Unveil Mobile Dolby Atmos Recording Studio

Sweetwater and Airstream have announced a custom-built Dolby Atmos mobile recording studio inside an Airstream trailer, set to tour music festivals, schools, tr...

14/05/2026

American Association of Professional Baseball Expands Broadcast Distribution for 2026 Season

The American Association of Professional Baseball (AAPB) has announced a new par...

14/05/2026

ESPN to Establish Week-Long Super Bowl LXI Broadcast Center on Santa Monica Beach

ESPN has announced plans to transform Santa Monica Beach into a broadcast hub du...

14/05/2026

Amagi Announces Major Upgrade to CLOUDPORT Cloud Broadcast Platform

Amagi has announced a significant update to Amagi CLOUDPORT, its cloud-based broadcast playout platform. The update includes 250-plus features shipped in FY25-2...

14/05/2026

Clear-Com to Showcase New Products and Platform Updates at InfoComm 2026

Clear-Com will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth N7005, June 17-19, Las Vegas Convention Center), introducing a new product that builds on Arcadia Central Station...

14/05/2026

Ikegami to Exhibit at BroadcastAsia 2026 with Two New Viewfinder Premieres

Ikegami will exhibit at BroadcastAsia 2026 (Stand 5D3-1, Singapore Expo, May 20-22), introducing two new viewfinders alongside its existing camera, control, and...

14/05/2026

dB Broadcast Delivers IP-Based OB Trucks for Cloudbass Featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Cameras

Grass Valley has announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside ...

14/05/2026

NAGRAVISION and WPBSA Launch Play Snooker Digital Platform

NAGRAVISION, a Kudelski Group company, has announced a partnership with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) to launch Play Snooker,...

14/05/2026

Belden To Acquire RUCKUS Networks for Approximately $1.85 Billion

Belden Inc. has announced a definitive agreement to acquire RUCKUS Networks from Vistance Networks for approximately $1.85 billion. The transaction has been app...

14/05/2026

NVIDIA Releases Content Localization Blueprint for AI-Assisted Dubbing and Speech Translation

NVIDIA has released the Content Localization Blueprint, a modular reference arch...

14/05/2026

Disney+ To Stream Banana Bowl Championship Live This October

Disney has announced that Disney will be the exclusive U.S. streaming home of the Banana Bowl, the Banana Ball league season championship, streaming live this ...

14/05/2026

Arkona and Manifold To Exhibit on Magna Systems Stand at BroadcastAsia 2026

Arkona technologies and technology partner manifold will demonstrate their production solutions on the Magna Systems and Engineering stand (Booth 5D1-1) at Broa...

14/05/2026

Haivision Webinar: New Broadcast Contribution Products Featuring Minor League Baseball Case Study

Haivision will host a webinar on Thursday, May 21 at 10 a.m. ET / 4 p.m. CET cov...

14/05/2026

The CW Network and ESPN Announce ACC Sublicense Agreement Through 2030-31 Season

The CW Network and ESPN have announced a sublicense broadcast agreement for The CW to televise ACC football and men's and women's college basketball gam...

14/05/2026

Detroit Pistons Ink Local Media Rights Deal With Scripps Sports

The agreement marks Scripps Sports' first NBA local rights deal...

14/05/2026

Report: Broadcasting Among Hardest-Hit Industries as AI Reshapes the Workforce

A new report from education-technology company Wiingy testing post-ChatGPT predictions against three years of real-world data has identified broadcasting as one...

14/05/2026

Madonna, Shakira, and BTS to Headline First-Ever FIFA World Cup Final Halftime Show

Global Citizen and FIFA have announced that Madonna, Shakira, and BTS will headl...

14/05/2026

Sundance Institute Names 2026 Episodic Lab Fellows

LOS ANGELES, CA, May 14, 2026 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the cohort selected for the 2026 Episodic Lab program, taking place at Dunaway ...

14/05/2026

Spotify Expands Music Access for Young Listeners, Extending Managed Accounts to Free Tier

At Spotify, we're focused on making every listening experience feel intentio...

14/05/2026

Spotify Brings Nashville's Songwriting Community Together for Mental Health Summit

Spotify recently welcomed songwriters, artists, executives, and music students t...

14/05/2026

Sonuscore update Lux Orchestral Strings

New articulations, ostinatos, Motion Scoring Articulation Sets & more Sonuscore's flagship cinematic string library has just been treated to a significa...

14/05/2026

Pr Recording & Residence

World-class studio opens on T rkiye's Aegean coast P r Recording & Residence have announced their official opening, introducing a new world-class reside...

14/05/2026

Nugen Audio update DialogCheck

Now supports channel layouts up to 9.1.6 Nugen Audio have just released an update for their AI-powered dialogue intelligibility and compliance tool. Set to ...

14/05/2026

UVI release Orchestral Suite 2

New recordings & one-key chord tool UVI have just announced the release of Orchestral Suite 2, a ground-up redesign of their all-in-one symphonic orchestra ...

14/05/2026

Rob Papen launch eXplorer 11

Two new arrivals & expanded factory content Rob Papen's all-encompassing plug-in and virtual instrument collection has just been treated to another upda...

14/05/2026

FSK Audio release QRonicle

Embed QR codes into DAW sessions FSK Audio's latest plug-in doesn't process audio, but serves as an organisational tool that allows QR codes to be e...

14/05/2026

SBS Board appoints Jane Palfreyman Managing Director

SBS Board appoints Jane Palfreyman Managing Director 13 May, 2026 Media releases The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Board of Directors is pleased to an...

14/05/2026

Transforming bold ideas into market-ready productions: Digital Originals returns

Transforming bold ideas into market-ready productions: Digital Originals returns 14 May, 2026 Media releases SBS, NITV and Screen Australia have announced ...

14/05/2026

Australia Uncovered Returns to SBS with Bold New Season Featuring John Safran on Free Speech and Powerful Stories of Justice and Survival

Australia Uncovered Returns to SBS with Bold New Season Featuring John Safran on...

14/05/2026

Rohde & Schwarz transforms spectrum complexity into situational awareness and effective countermeasures at AOC Europe 2026

Rohde & Schwarz transforms spectrum complexity into situational awareness and ef...

14/05/2026

Rohde & Schwarz and Quantum Systems join forces to redefine EW and C-UAS-enabled uncrewed operations

Rohde & Schwarz and Quantum Systems join forces to redefine EW and C-UAS-enabled...

14/05/2026

Rohde & Schwarz showcases STANAG aligned ARDRONIS Counter UAS capability at NATO Technical Interoperability Exercise 2026

Rohde & Schwarz showcases STANAG aligned ARDRONIS Counter UAS capability at NATO...

14/05/2026

Code of Silence wins Best Drama Series at the 2026 BAFTA's!

Code of Silence has won the BAFTA for Best Drama Series at Sunday night's ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall. The series, starring Rose Ayling-Ellis and w...

14/05/2026

The Wraith Shield Advantage: Transforming L3Harris Radios into AI-Enabled Counter-UAS Sensors

Soldiers equipped with Falcon IV radios will soon gain a sense-and-protect capa...

14/05/2026

Getting into the Space Nuclear Power Game with Next-Generation Technology

Artists concept of the L3Harris Next Gen RTG in flight configuration, designed to provide 250 watts of reliable power for decades-long missions in deep space....

14/05/2026

Vivid Broadcast builds remote production network around Calrec

Vivid Broadcast was embracing remote production long before it became the industry norm. Now, with Calrec's True Control 2.0-enabled Argo M and Type R conso...

14/05/2026

Nielsen data shows NZ vehicle advertisers are shifting gears as fuel pressures make EVs and hybrids an increasingly attractive option

Car ad spend rises sharply in March as more auto buyers turn to electric, hybrid...

14/05/2026

Is This the Year for Agentic AI's Breakout in Broadcast?

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

CBS LA, Los Angeles Rams Ink New TV Deal

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

CueScripts CueiT 4 0 Wins Futures Best of Show Award Pres...

CueScript's CueiT 4.0 Wins Future's Best of Show Award, Presented at 2026 NAB Show by TV Tech CueScript, a leading international developer of professio...

14/05/2026

Expert-Led Education Sessions and Development of Online T...

Expert-Led Education Sessions and Development of Online Training Program Accelerate IPMX Adoption and Deployment The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) to...

14/05/2026

Klvr rechargeable battery launches in the USA to cut cost...

Klvr is launching in the United States with a professional-grade rechargeable battery solution that cuts costs and improves performance across live entertainmen...

14/05/2026

Shooting into the depths of Bedlam with URSA Cine 17K 65

Shooting into the depths of Bedlam with URSA Cine 17K 65 Brie Clayton May 14, 2026 0 Comments Indie feature film paired digital 65mm capture with a Bl...

14/05/2026

WeMakeColor expands with Baselight, becoming hybrid color facility

WeMakeColor expands with Baselight, becoming hybrid color facility Caroline Shawley May 14, 2026 0 Comments Boutique Mexican-based studio integrates B...

14/05/2026

Berklee's Summer in the City Returns with Free Concerts Throughout Boston Area

Berklee's Summer in the City Returns with Free Concerts Throughout Boston Ar...

14/05/2026

Chelsey Green Named to Billboard's 2026 Women in Music List

Chelsey Green Named to Billboard's 2026 Women in Music List The Berklee professor and chair of the Recording Academy Board of Trustees joins other high-pr...